La Mesa, California-Street signs are erected and the streets are blocked. This is another step towards normalcy for La Mesa.

The La Mesa Certified Farmers Market returned to the city center on Friday night after leaving for nearly a year. The market is held once a week on La Mesa Boulevard and provides a place for vendors to line up on the street to sell fresh produce, food and various other products to the community.

According to Brian Beevers of the Brian Farmers Market, during most of the pandemic, the market opened a store in a parking lot on Allison Avenue nearby, where the Business has dropped by about 30%.

Needless to say, he is happy to come back, but not everyone is excited about the return of the market.

“There are some tensions in some companies,” Beavers said. “Our promise is still to support them. Our promise is to let people go their way.

Some downtown business owners told FOX 5 that the market had blocked their storefronts and occupied the required parking spaces.

Laura Lothian, a board member of the La Mesa Village Association, said that she is striving to open a market in the city center on Friday, “because it will be a very popular thing.” But she said it happened over the years. A lot of changes have been made. She believes that the market is already harmful to physical businesses in the city centre, especially on one of the busiest nights of the week.

“What happened is that the farmer’s market is set up in such a way that all the pedestrians are there, not here,” Lothian said. “I know that all these companies are now invisible. It’s painful.”

Lothian said that the market can be physically transformed to provide pedestrians with space to use the sidewalk.

“Now you buy onions here, and then you come here and say,’I’m going to buy a DVD,'” she said. “But now, everyone is here.”

Nevertheless, all parties seem to want a compromise.

Beavers said the market launched a new initiative on Friday that allows people who buy from physical stores to bring receipts to outdoor tents.

“We only give you a $5 voucher, which you can spend at any supplier,” he said. “We were hit by this, but we really feel that if we are to repair the fence here, we need to start doing something to help.”